Hannibal, Carthage, and History’s First White on Black Genocide

Hannibal of Carthage

Hannibal of Carthage was one of the
baddest Black men to come out of Africa. His military conquests are
still the stuff of legend more than 2,000 years later. Most Black men
and women have never heard of Hannibal, and those who have do not
realize that he was as Black as the soil of the Nile. While white folks
mentally masturbate over movies like 300 and Troy, the story of one of
the most epic military geniuses of all times goes untold. Until now.

The African Kingdom of Carthage

An artist's rendition of the City of Carthage

The city-state of Carthage was founded
on the North African coast in 814 BC by a mixed population of the
survivors of the Saharan ecological collapse and the Nubians (meaning
the people of Carthage were Black as hell). Anthropologists argue that
the people of Carthage were actually Phonecians, but genetic evidence
suggests otherwise. The Carthaginians were no more Phonecian than the
Ancient Egyptians were Arab. The Kingdom was a matriarchal one – meaning
women held authority. The Carthaginian Republic grew to become the
longest-lived and largest state in the ancient Mediterranean. By 600
B.C., Carthage had become self-governing, reached the height of its
power, and was a Mediterranean powerhouse. The land was rich in gold,
ivory, and salt, and the people of Carthage were skilled shipbuilders,
tradesmen, and merchants who knew commerce.

Greece and Rome, greedy for control of
Carthage’s resources and trade routes, constantly struggled with
Carthage over territory. Although the Carthaginians refused to enter
armed conflict and insisted on an agreement with the Greeks, the Greeks
ignored the truce and invaded Carthage in a sneak attack around 310 B.C.

To regain their sovereignty, Carthage
fought four brutal wars against Greece and Rome – driving out the Greeks
in the first war in 306 B.C. The Romans stepped in to pick up where
Greece left off in 264 B.C. – launching three “Punic Wars” against
Carthage. Like most wars, White powers hungry for natural resources and
riches unleashed atrocities against Black men that where unprecedented.
The defeat of Carthage in the First Punic War gave Rome complete control
of the Mediterranean sea.

It was in response to this white
aggression that one of the baddest Black men to ever live rose up to
bring Rome to the brink of destruction. n an age where wars and
conflicts lasted decades, Hannibal’s army had all but annihilated Rome
in only 2 short years after beginning his campaign. His was one of the
most epic military campaigns ever launched, and was so intelligently
executed that tacticians still study his technical and tactical
proficiency.

Hannibal’s father, Hamilcar Barca, was
the leading Carthaginian commander and his brothers were all commanders
during the during the First Punic War. Hannibal was determined to
succeed where they had failed with a superior military strategy.

Hannibal’s Military Strategy

“I swear so soon as age will permit…I will use fire and steel to arrest the destiny of Rome.” – HannibalWhile preparing for war, Hannibal
developed a strategy based on the fact that Rome had complete control of
the oceans. This meant instead of being able to take ships straight
across the Mediterranean and attack Rome from the East, he would have to
take his troops along the most difficult and unsuspected route; through
France (Gaul) over the Alps and attack Rome from the North. Since the
Romans believed the Alps were impossible to pass an army through, they
would be taken completely by surprise.

The only animals capable of surviving
the journey was the African elephant, and so with 40,000 foot soldiers,
5,000 war elephants, and 12,000 horsemen Hannibal made the trek. To
keep his army together through what was to be a miserable march into
Rome, Hannibal ruthlessly exploited the strengths, weaknesses, and self
interests of the men that he led; at times promising the riches of Italy
to one group, and at other times promising death for failure to another
group. His psychological strategy worked – a year after starting out,
Hannibal had lost more than half his men during the march, but still
managed to surprise and defeat a well fed, well organized Roman infantry
at the Battle of Trebbia in Northern Rome.

Hannibal didn’t let time or his
laziness get the best of him; he quickly moved to Cannae, where he
surprised the Romans yet again, and turned the strength of the Roman
battle formation into a weakness using an envelopment tactic. He
encircled the square unit which eliminated the Roman numerical advantage
by shrinking the surface area where combat could occur. In other words,
the men inside the square could do nothing while the men on the outer
sides had to fight off attacks. Whenever the square formation would try
to charge through one side of the circle, Hannibal’s troops would move,
open up, and encircle them once again.

As a result,
even though Hannibal’s force was inferior to that of his foe, he won.
Hannibal’s army managed to surround and kill or capture nearly 70,000
Romans. In battle after battle, Hannibal defeated a much larger and more
sophisticated military by understanding the strengths,
weaknesses, and the environment of all the parties involved. He knew the
minds and hearts of the people he fought for, with, and against.

Hannibal’s vision of
military affairs, derived from experience gained alongside his father,
stretched over most of the Greco-Roman world of his time. His vision
gave rise to his grand strategy of conquering Rome by opening a northern
front and subduing allied city-states on the peninsula rather than by
attacking Rome directly – a kind of proxy war. The alpine invasion of
Italy was a military operation that would shake the Mediterranean World
of 218 BC with repercussions for more than two decades. It was a world
war in the sense that it involved about three-quarters of the population
of the entire Punic-Greco-Roman world and few people living in the
Mediterranean were able to escape it. Virtually every family in Rome
lost a member or members in the swath of destruction brought down on
them by Hannibal and his Carthaginian armies.

Rome took a page from Hannibal’s
playbook and invaded Carthage in 203 BC. The action placed Hannibal’s
homeland in dire threat, and he was recalled from Rome to ward off the
new threat. His arrival immediately restored the dominance of Carthage’s
national guard, which placed him in command. The war was so savage and
both sides so decimated that by 202 BC, both sides were suing for peace.
Negotiations were shaky due to Roman allegations of “Punic Faith,”
referring to the war-like nature of the North Africans. (Keep in mind, Greece and Rome attacked CARTHAGE first!!)

Rome and Carthage worked out a peace
plan whereby Carthage could keep its African territory but would lose
its overseas empire. Also, Carthage was to reduce its fleet and pay a
war restitution to Rome. But when Carthage captured a stranded Roman
fleet in the Gulf of Tunes and stripped it of supplies, negotiations
fell apart. Rumors had it that the Romans actually set up the stranded
fleet to provoke the Carthaginians. Fearing that war was about to pop
off again, Hannibal returned to Rome with his army. The decisive battle
at Zama soon followed, and Hannibal was finally defeated.

Hannibal is Defeated

The Four Phases of the Second Punic War

Once Hannibal had been defeated, Rome
totally invaded Carthage – Rome decided that a military victory wasn’t
crushing enough. It pronounced a curse on the ancient city, and
dispatched mercenaries to kill every man, woman, and child within the
city walls. Priests sprinkled salt over the fertile Carthaginian soil so
that no plant would grow, and no animal could drink the ground water.
The Romans completely destroyed the culture, writings, and technology of
Carthage, leaving behind nothing but ashes and sand.

According to scholar Cheik Anta Diop, the Romans gave themselves permission to commit atrocities with propaganda.
The destroyed people deserved their fate because they where impious,
sinister, lustful, and incapable of promoting progress. Romans were
encouraged to forget Carthage, and later generations were taught that the Carthaginians – not the Romans – were the real savages. By twisting the story around, Rome could go on with a clear conscience.

The brutal destruction of the entire ethnic group that was Carthage would be the first in a long line of white savagery.

Hannibal Barca of Carthage History’s Greatest General

Coin bearing the image of Hannibal and his famed battalion of elephants

AFRICANGLOBE
– In 247 B.C., the year Hannibal Barca was born, the Carthage empire
was about 500 years old. Known as one of the greatest strategist in
military history, the battles of Hannibal would strike a turning point
in the history of the continent that would be called Africa.

Carthage
had been settled by Phoenicians in North Africa near the current
Tunis. In his 1961 work, French Historian Gabriel Audisio comments that
he considered “Hannibal to be neither a Phoenician, nor a Carthaginian,
nor a Punic, but a North African… The majority of the Punic populace
seems to have had African ancestry.”

The Carthaginians, according
to Audisio’s research, mixed freely with the native populations of North
Africa. The Punic of North Africa seem to have been a mix between the
Phoenicians and native North Africans, the Berbers. The Phoenicians were
a Semitic people said to have migrated from north of Palestine into
Northern Africa, spreading their dominion throughout the Mediterranean
regions. They were primarily known as merchant traders with an economy
tied to the sea trades.There is no picture of Hannibal in
existence today.

The coin above is frequently presented by commentators
as a representation of Hannibal and his legacy of tamed elephants. While
this writer was not able to find authority that the coins were made
contemporaneously during or near the life of Hannibal — which was more
than 2,000 years ago — the existence of such coinage during some point
during our common age is no surprise in light of Hannibal’s historical
legacy.

What we do have are descriptions of Hannibal by
commentators of his time. According to the Roman historian Levy of the
first century of our era, Hannibal was “fearless, utterly prudent in
danger, indefatigable, able to endure heat and cold, controlled in
eating habits, unpretentious in dress, willing to sleep wrapped in
military cloak, a superb rider and horseman.” He was the son of the
Carthage general Hamilcar Barca. There is no knowledge of his mother in
the history records, not even her name. He had two
brothers: Hasdrubal resided in Spain and Maharbal was captain of
Hannibal’s calvary.

Carthage and Rome were at war during the First
Punic War (264-241 B.C.). Both empires were seeking supremacy over the
Mediterranean. Hannibal’s father, Hamilcar Barca, general of the
Carthaginian arm, was infuriated about the western Mediterranean losses
of Sicily and Sardinia. When Hannibal was 17 years old, however, his
father was killed in an ambush in Spain, which was primarily under the
rule of the North African empire. Hannibal would son step fully into his
military career.

Hannibal the Great Strategist

A map showing the Carthaginian and roman empires

In
October 218 B.C., during the Second Punic War, Hannibal had arrived at
the Alps. His soldiers are said to have stretched for more than eight
miles at the Alps, the foothills of the Roman Empire. Hannibal’s army of
100,000 men would trek and fight 1,500 miles to arrive at the Alps from
Spain.

Hannibal armies included Numidians, North Africans from an
area roughly where Algeria now draws its boundaries. The Numidians were
known as master horsemen who could guide their horses with their knees,
leaving their hands free to use swords and throw javelins.They had
fought attacks from European tribes like the Gauls.

Hannibal is said to have given this speech to the army of men who had survived and crossed the swift-flowing Rhone river:

“Why
are you afraid?… The greater part of our journey is accomplished. We
have surmounted the Pyrenees; we have crossed the Rhone, that mighty
river, in spite of the opposition of thousands of Gauls and the fury of
the river itself. Now we have the Alps in sight. On the other side of
those mountains lies Italy…. Does anyone imagine the Alps to be anything
but what they are–lofty mountains. No part of the earth reaches the
sky, or is insurmountable to mankind. The Alps produce and support
living things. If they are passable by a few men, they are passable to
armies.”

Hannibal lost half of his army in the first
two weeks into the Alps. Landslides were touched off by mountain tribes.
Men died during hand battle with tribesmen. Starvation and disease were
also companions of the embattled lot. Polybus, a Greek historian and
contemporary to Hannibal, described Hannibal’s arrival to the Po Valley
with about 26,000 men. At the Po Valley, Hannibal is said to have made
this speech:

“Soldiers! You have now surmounted not
only the ramparts of Italy, but also Rome. You are entering friendly
country inhabited by people who hate the Romans as much as we do. The
rest of the journey will be smooth and downhill, and, after one, or at
most a second battle, you will have the citadel and capital of Italy in
your possession.”

Commentators have speculated on why
Hannibal spoke these words because the men were about to face the most
difficult part of the journey. Friends did not await in the Po Valley.
Here, the Roman army would meet the men in battle. In retrospect,
considering how far the men had come, there really was no going back at
this point. The Carthaginians believed that Rome was considering an
invasion of Africa. Hannibal believed he had to act through an overland
attack on Roman to save Carthage. He would spend 15 years in Italy,
winning many battles — such as the Battle of Cannae where he lost 6,000
troops to Rome’s 70,000 troops.

We know Hannibal
did not succeed, but are astonished by how close he came to success. The
second of the Punic Wars was over. When Hannibal eventually retreated
with his army to Carthage, his army was defeated by Scipio Africanus in
the Battle of Zama. Always sought by the Romans, when Hannibal was
about the age of 64 and to be taken prisoner, he took poison and is
recorded to have stated:

“Let us now put an end to the
great anxiety of the Romans who have thought it too lengthy and too
heavy a task to wait for the death of a hated old man.”

=========== This man is REVERED as the most intelligent stategist in World History and his TRUE story needs to be told!More to come...